Mad Poet Of The Apocalypse  

She protects herself
Refusing to believe that she is loved
And in that way
Escapes the pain she has known
The pain that she fears
   
She thinks herself safe
But she is not
  The things she hides and runs from
Re-appear in other forms

She dreams of waking one morning
With everything all right
And she fears it, too
Because were that ever to happen
She might have to face the reality
Of her dissatisfaction
   
Maybe one day she will notice
The lens through which she veiws the world
Is smudged full across
  
Maybe then
With courage and effort
She will strip away the smears
And finally
Enable herself to view the world
As it is
Uncontaminated by the oily fingerprints
Of her past . . .
 
  
for ipd
29 October, 1992
mag

Two A.M.
The lights are up
And the band is tearing down
I wander over from the club next door
Take up a position
At the entrance
A wall covers my left side
I light a smoke
A black man
(black skin, black clothes, black beret, U.S. Army dog tags)
Turns to me, says
'I was thinkin' there ain't an ugly woman in here, then I saw you'
  
It is a comment about my hair
  
'Ha, ha', I say, 'You look like Eldridge Cleaver'.
  
'I knew him', he says
  
'So did I', I tell him
'I met him a few months before he died'
  
I don't tell him
I met Eldridge at a poetry open
Or that he wanted to manage me.
  
'Eldridge sold out' he says
  
The rest is lost in the shrieks
Of a drunk crew of girls
  
'He did what he did', I say, 'I miss the Panthers'
  
He looks at me and pulls back his sleeve
And on the dark skin revealed
Is a tatoo of a Black Panther
  
'I knew 'em all', he says
  
And for the next hour and a half
We talk of our failed revolutions
Race War, betrayal, and disillusionment
  
'It has never been a black versus white thing,' I tell him 
'It is a have versus have-not thing'
 
He pulls a pack of Winstons from his pocket
Offers me one, I take it
Lighters flare in our faces
For a moment we are illuminated
In the flash of molotov cocktails
The moment passes
  
'The solutions were there. We had programs that were working.
But they didn't want things that worked. Nobody did.' His voice is tired
  
'What happened in the black community is a disaster. A tragedy', I say
'I understand that now' 
  
'Are you a Warrior?' he asks me
  
'I am awakening, but I am only an egg' is my reply
  
We both are old enough to know the real enemy
After tilting at windmills most of our lives
And two men who stand and look each other in the eyes
And speak their truths are comrades
  
'You are a Man and a Warrior' he tells me
It is like a Benediction
  
Finally
With the black and white police cruisers
Circling
We stand in silence, smoking
Then we shake hands
Do the half hug half shoulder bump thing men do
  
  
He offers up that Black Panther genuflection/salute
I haven't seen it in years


'The struggle continues' he says
  
I raise a clenched fist, 'For the People, bro'
  
And in seconds
Both of us vanish into the night
  
November 18, 2K6
ranchoZenrodeo

(an open letter to Ralph)

 
The sky was so incredibly blue 
On the day after you died 
Soft and deep
It threatened to pick me up
Pull me up
If I looked at it too long
Leaving me hanging there
Suspended above the treetops
And telephone lines
Caught in between yesterday and today
In a place where your eyes are still clear
And your heart slams like a jackhammer
In your chest
While you laugh about a close call 
You had on your way home
 
So here I am
65,000 pounds of concrete and steel
Roaring down State Highway 79
At sixty-five plus miles an hour
On the verge of a transcendental experience
 
I keep seeing flashes of your cynical smile
Photo memories of knowing you
Would you have known
That it has been almost exactly a year
Since I first rolled onto this jobsite?
I had no idea then of who you were
Or how knowing you would teach me
Just how tenuous a grasp
Each of us has on this moment
 
Ralph, were you aware of this link?
The bond that can't be explained
Only acknowledged
It commands that I stop this truck
Pull over! Write this, now!
 
But blue-collar keeps on going
Hell, Ralph
One thing we both knew
Blue-collar got a job to do
 
I roll onto the jobsite
Raising a cloud of dust
That lingers like a gritty halo
Around my machine
 
Do you remember that slow pour
Over in Area One?
When I told you about the Whiteboy Blues?
God, did you laugh
How many months since we stood in the dark
Sky lit by a dreamfire moon and the stars
Like the eyes of a million spiders
Skittering from horizon to horizon
What did we say that night
As the trucks howled past
Engines screaming painfully
At the deaf ears of the moon
Load after load
Tires tearing at the ground
Raising up a red cloud
That clawed its way slowly south
Like the frightened ghost 
Of a crippled dog
 
I bitched about my job
You bitched about yours
Then each of us bitched about the other
I think we both heard
What was really being said
 
"Jesus, Charlie, I love this shit!"
 
"I hear ya, Ralph."
 
"There's like this little boy inside me, Charlie
and he live for this . . . yeah, he love the noise and dirt
and hangin' wit' the big boys.
He like gettin' respect for a job well done,
He need that."
 
"Check this out, Ralph,
like, you know how a new pair
of work boots smells?"
 
"I know just what you sayin', Charlie."
 
"Okay . . . how about the way
those boots grip your feet
and, like
anchor you to the ground
until for a moment it feels like you're here forever . . ."
 
"Yeah, Charlie . . . and don't forget
how that leather squeak when you walk
how it talk to you
when you draggin' yourself off the site
at day's end
Then there's the way a hammer in yo' toolbelt
slap yo' ass when you hump up a ladder
then
when you almos' to the top
another man reach down to give you a hand up
and from the point of his chin
a drop of sweat fall, hittin' you 
in the corner of an eye and for one blind moment . . .
. . . brothers . . ."
 
Well, my friend
You never knew I was a poet
And truly
You probably wouldn't have understood
Had I told you
Even so, there was something
 
Ralph, I guess men like us
Don't quote verse or paint pictures
But this job
This job is our monument
Our Cheops, our Tenochtitlan
 
The sky was so incredibly blue
On the day after you died
Soft and deep
It threatened to pick me up
Pull me up
And leave me hanging there
 
I don't pretend to know
Where you are off to
But if they ask you
What you did with your life
I can hear you saying
 
"I never wrote a song, but I sang one.
I sang because I built things.
I took mud and stone and sweat
and I built things . . . and I loved it."
 
Hell, Ralph
If I hadn't met you
I may never have remembered
The part of me that loves it, too
 
Rest in peace, Bro',
I'll see ya on the next big one
 
30 august, 1990
mag
©1990 chas altvater

I want out of real

I want to become the ultimate

The God of autism

Move across silent dark water

The icey sea of my mind

Let there be light by my command

I am flesh made god

The word of god

I am the God of Words

I will not rest on the seventh day

In my universe I do what I want

Even if a host of angels should rise up

And my Chosen Ones crucify me

My will would prevail

I would sweep the treasonous

The whole mutinous Holy Horde

To banishment in caverns of Ice and Fire

I would hang on the cross of the Chosen

But I would not die for a thousand years

My living body slowly rotting

As I babble every dark secret that ever shamed

In a speed-rap shriek

I'd scream it all for a millenium

And there would be legends of a crucified god

Who would not die

And he wouldn't shut up, either!

Then I would loose those I had cast down

Set them upon the cities

Set them upon the land, the very Garden

And the stalks of wheat would fall

So when I have that far-away look

Don't bump me or try to rouse me

Never say to me 'penny for your thoughts'

Believe me, you really don't want to know

And you DO NOT WANT to get inside my head

Try getting in your own

Try to get through that crazy cat's-cradle

To scramble through the bramble of coping strategies

You mistake for personality

And if you find a center that cannot hold

You better get rough and shuffle

And about the flashes at the edge of sight

Or were you the whispers?

Doesn't matter

I think maybe I've really, like

Hey, who said a god has to practice what he preached?

And that's why you'd like to give it a try

Isn't it?

Remember though

Even a god should have a care

So be careful in there

Go ahead . . . I dare you

for l. jean 

25 September, 1997

perris

Let my illusion
Be one of dark earth
And new green growing
If I imagine rhythms
Let them be rhythms
Built from the steely 'SHHH'
Of the shovel's bite
And dusty wallop of tumbling soil

Let me dream of sunburn
Sweat and stinging eyes
Let me believe real
The foundations I shall set
Upon the dishonest Earth
For all dreamers exist
In shacks of words
Erected on such slabs

Word Walls
Truths nonexistent
Cities built with Tarot Cards
The illusion is stronger here
The dream is wild
Has driven off lucidity
Card buildings stretch
Strain for the sky
Without words scream out

'This is real!
This is all that has ever been real!'

Strongest here

I dream a shovel's song
A brilliant sun
My back to all those high things
And the need to fall lower
Searching for sweat and a singular
Moment of clarity
To know that I am
Whether I think I am or not

RanchoZenRodeo
02-11-2005
©2005 chasaltvater

If I could
I would tell you
That all any of us have
Is this very moment
And I would promise it to you
Would gift you 
With the Fundamental Particle
That which is the Within as well as the Without
  
I would smile
And say something like,

"This moment is yours
and as far as moments go,
this one has left the building"

There would be laughter
And I would look at you
With eyes that speak
In a language you do not know


And while torrents
Of Moments
Cascade around us
You would find yourself alone
Lost in a statue's eyes
A Shadow in the Moon's garden
Of brilliant silence
  
10 april, 2K6
ranchoZenrodeo